Tenda dos Milagres

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**Title** **Tent of Miracles**
Author	Jorge Amado
Original title	Tenda dos Milagres
Country	Brazil
Language	Portuguese
Publisher
Released	1969

Tenda dos Milagres (English: Tent of Miracles) is a Brazilian Modernist novel. It was written by Jorge Amado in 1969. It was later adapted to a 1977 Cinema Novo (Nouvelle Vague) film by director/screenplay writer Nelson Pereira dos Santos.

[edit] The book

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

It chronicles the chaos that results when a prominent American Nobel Prize winner arrives in Bahia, with nothing but praise on his lips for a long-forgotten local writer-scientist named Pedro Arcanjo. When the media finally discover who Arcanjo was and what he espoused, they are completely horrified to discover that he believed that the way to improve the lot of humanity was for people of various races to marry and have children by one another in mixed-race marriages. Further, Arcanjo clearly acted on his beliefs. The rampant racism of Brazilians, is completely exposed. The American is seen to be applying Arcanjo's theories, by having an affair with a local mestiço woman.

[edit] The film

The film version is very well adapted, being very faithful to the book. It stars Hugo Carvana, Sonia Dias and Severino Dada. The director satirizes and exposes racism on the Brazilian society. In the most notable example in which he does this is in a flashback scene where Brazilians are shown listening with approving interest on the Nazi race-theories in the late 1930s.